The 6th edition of Decentralized Hands-on Program Exhibition (D-HOPE) catalogue, known as “Gakyed Gatoen – Festival of Happiness” was launched by Hon’ble Tengye Lyonpo Loknath Sharma at the Clock Tower Square, Thimphu today. Lyonpo highlighted that CSIs play critical role in diversifying the economy and building national economy base besides women empowerment, skilling Bhutan, improving living standards and enhancing rural income and generating jobs. He urged and requested to support our young boys and girls by being their customer and clients as they are working hard to make our economy self-reliant. CSI also has the potential to reverse our economic basket and platform from urban base to rural base. He urged to harness the benefit of technology providing digital catalogue for CSI products.
Over the past few years, Department of Cottage and Small Industry, MoEA with technical and financial assistance from JICA has trained many Bhutanese CSI entrepreneurs on the concept of D-HOPE and guided them to develop their own business programs. A D-HOPE has been produced to document their programs and share it for the reach of larger markets or public.